


Side Steps

by OceanTheSoulRebel



Series: Knight's Favor [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-08 19:55:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14701086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanTheSoulRebel/pseuds/OceanTheSoulRebel
Summary: The stories that make up their journeys, together and apart.Or, what didn't make it in the main body of fic that comprises the story of Lavellan's Knight and the man who earned her favor.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: how about “This is going to hurt” and starting out serious but it twists and gets really light and happy after a beat?
> 
> Characters: Elara Lavellan, male OC non-Lavellan elf
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> CW: Needles, blood mention

 

_Arlathvhen, 9:25 Dragon_

 

This is going to hurt,” the older man warned her, his thickly accented voice heavy with the warm climes of Antiva. It was the only warning before the needle dug into Elara’s belly - not deep enough to wound overly much, but certainly deep enough to be felt.

Elara hissed at the first contact, his craftsmanship beautiful but the application painful. She craned her head forward from its pillowy rest to watch the craftsman pull the dyed threads under her skin, methodically stitching the design into her flesh with strong, confident hands.  

“Craftsman Hanallan,” she said tightly, her eyes following each precise movement of needle and thread, “thank you again for doing this. You honor me with this service.”

Hanallan didn’t look up at her words but gave a soft smile. His hands worked with practiced ease, stopping frequently to mop up the leaking blood and ink that spilled from the tiny wounds.

“Well, if you’re determined to break tradition, might as well be with me. Who better?” Hanallan set his tools aside and looked to her. “It’s not everyday I get to tattoo a Knight. You’ll take my work into battle with you, which is its own kind of honor.”

“And when I fall, I’ll have a ready  _vhenadahl_  to remember me by.”

Hanallan laughed, the sound rich as an autumnal sunbeam. “Ah, there’s the morbidity I had been warned of, nice of it to join us.” He rose with a languid stretch, rolling his shoulders and flexing his fingers. “You know, you never told me whose  _vallaslin_  you’ll take on next year. Who gave you your calling?”

Elara hummed absentedly, peering down at her stomach and the unfinished image it bore. “It’s been a point of contention between myself and my mother,” she confided. “Figured it might ring true for others of your -” she caught herself just in time, “- generation.”

“You can say it,  _lethallan,_ we’re getting old,” he replied drily. Hanallan sat down once more and took up his needle again, threading it with a fine, black-inked thread. His hands were confident as he worked, a trait she appreciated.

“Falon’Din,” Elara answered, watching the needle pull the ink under her skin in birthing the image. A thick, sturdy trunk spanned over her abdomen, the skin pinkened and irritated by his craft. White paint detailed the sprawling leaf-laden branches that would soon cover her ribcage, and the gnarled roots that had yet to ghost down to her hips, long fingers forever reaching for the earth beneath her feet.

Hanallan let out a low whistle and gave a short shake of his head. “I can see why she might have feelings on the subject.”

“That’s putting it mildly. You’d think I’m still a child.”

“You’re just barely over twenty and have yet to receive your  _vallaslin_  - you’re still a child to most, if not all clans,” he pointed out. Hanallan re-inked his thread and continued his work. “Taking on a tattoo before your  _vallaslin_  out of spite does not scream ‘adulthood’ to me,  _da’len.”_

She snorted. “Now you sound like my Keeper. You’re not secretly her in disguise, are you?”

“Creators forbid! It’s hard enough shooing children out of my tent - I would hate to wrangle them as a Keeper.” The craftsman smiled and gave a soft sigh. “No, I respect the patience of those who lead. I do not have it in me to do so.”

“And to think, I was just thinking that was what this tent was missing - the pitter-patter of obnoxious little feet.”

Hanallan grinned wolfishly, shifting to ink up into her ribs. “Are you trying to suggest something,  _lethallan?_  You are already mostly naked.”

“But  _hahren,”_  she teased, “you have no patience for young ones, didn’t you just say?”

_“‘Hahren,’_  you call me? I’m not that old!” He flicked her ribcage with feigned umbrage, though his eyes danced when he met her gaze. “At any rate, you are already pledged to Lethanavir, and I would not stand in His way.”

“Something like that,” she agreed. “Though don’t remind my mother of that fact, she still seeks to have me bonded and pregnant around the campfire, single-handedly bearing the next generation of Lavellan.” She grimaced. “What a thought.”

“You never know,  _da’len,_  it could happen. We cannot know the future.”

Elara scoffed. “That would be a tumultuous future indeed, then. What poor soul would choose a Knight as their mate?”

“Probably someone smitten with your tattoos. This will be my best work yet, I think.”

Elara returned her attentive gaze to her abdomen, watching leaves bloom from under his talented fingers. “I might have to keep this one to myself; it’s too pretty to share.”

He smiled at her and tapped her rib in amicable agreement. “Wait until you see it finished,” he promised. “It will be even better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me on tumblr, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul.
> 
> Comments and concrit always appreciated! Thank you for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Dorian x Elara, "the scratch of a quill/pen nib against parchment."
> 
> Characters: Dorian Pavus, Elara Lavellan
> 
> Rating: Gen

_9:41 Dragon, Harvestmere_

“Do you ever miss it? Your old life?”

The pen scratched at the page beneath his hand, breaking the soothing rhythm of his writing.  _“Fasta vass,”_ he swore. “That is an ugly stain, you’ll have to forgive this sloppy mess.” Dorian reached for a blotter, the stained fabric wiping away the error as best as it could. “I’ll remind you that I deliberately left that shambling horror behind.”

“But do you miss them, your parents? Your father, perhaps not, but surely your mother?”

He sighed and shoved his chair away from the desk, scraping against the stone floor to face her. “No,” he admitted. “While she rarely agreed with Father on his approaches to dealing with all this,” he gestured to himself with a wide, disparaging wave of his hand, “she valued the security I could have brought for them, for House Pavus. She… No. I do not.”

“She sounds like she would have gotten along with my own mother, were she not Dalish.”

“Oh?” Dorian bounced the pen between his fingers, his eyes on her face. “How do you suppose?”

Elara chuckled. “Mother never cared for my pursuing being a warrior. She wanted me to be safe within the circle of our wagons, huddled behind the sails of the aravels. Perhaps she wished for me to be a healer, as much as I could be without mana in my veins. Could you imagine—me, a mage?”

He smiled. “It would certainly be strange to see you in robes, but I suppose we must leave fashion to the fashionable.”

She took a long drink. “Point me in their direction, we’ll ask this fashionable person their opinion on the matter.”

Dorian laughed, a strained sound that fought with the tears that gathered in his eyes. “Ah, my dearest friend,  _amica mea,_ I miss you.”

A knock sounded at his door. “Lord Pavus, are you there?” a muffled voice called through the thick wood.

“Just a moment,” he answered, glancing toward the intruder and back at the bed. His imaginary visitor vanished; the only wine goblet that resided in the room was his own, already refilled a handful of times over the last hour as he wrote his frantic letters to various Inquisition contacts in the Free Marches.

Dorian turned once more to his desk, his handwriting the worse for the rushed scribbling of his pen across the parchment. He scrawled his signature over the bottom of the page and sprinkled the drying powder over the ink before answering the door.

“Good evening, Lord Pavus, I’m here to pick up your correspondence, as requested,” the runner said with a short bow.

He nodded. “It needs a moment to dry; I’m afraid I was less timely than I had planned.” Dorian walked back to the desk and readied his seal, melting gold wax over a candle. By rote he shook the page free of the drying powder before folding the letter. He steeled himself as he slid it slowly into a nearby envelope.

A shudder tripped along his spine at the sight of her name on its creamy face. Dorian had hoped the occasion for such letter writing may have been for happier times—a declaration of his grandiose takeover of the Magisterium, perhaps, or an invite to a particularly salacious salon at some point in the future. Instead he was reduced to begging for any evidence of her continued existence, the words weighing like iron on his shoulders as he wrote. His hand trembled slightly as he poured a measure of hot wax over the seam of the envelope flap, and he pressed his personal seal into the cooling liquid.

“Here.” Dorian all but shoved the letter into the young man’s hands. The young man bowed again and left, off to send the letter into the world beyond his bedroom door.

The fear that she was lost to them forever made him sick to his stomach. She had left him behind without an explanation, leaving the all too real possibility that he would never again have the opportunity to hear her laughter.  

Dorian drained the half-full wine glass that sat on his desk, reached for the bottle and drank from its receding depths, forgoing the goblet entirely. The familiar burn of alcohol did nothing to settle his fears.

It had been just under two weeks since she had escaped from the Storm Coast camp, Warden Blackwall hot on her heels, nary a word from either of them to allay the concerns that swept through Skyhold like a lingering sickness. He and Iron Bull rode hard for the keep after Elara's escape, sending frantic ravens ahead of them to alert the rest of the war council. Her advisers fought to keep the news close to their collective chests but it's too easy to notice when the castle's heart quit beating in her absence. 

Josephine spun the story of her absence as "family business." It disgusted him, for all the truth it bore. 

Dorian collapsed against the desk, his head pillowed on his arms. He fought not to see the sleep-deprived bruises that shadowed her eyes the last night they had been together as a team. He knew roughly where she was headed, following the pain of the loss of her clan, but the knowledge helped no one—they had to wait for her to return.

If she returned at all.

“How anyone let you leave Skyhold after you all but declared your exact intent to leave is beyond me.” He snorted, tears falling in earnest at the inane thought. Only Elara Lavellan could explain her plans to run away and have anyone surprised when she did just that. “Hopefully that oaf caught you in Highever and is with you now.”

Dorian finished the bottle and eyed it suspiciously. Hadn’t it just been full? He pulled another from a discreet crate near his desk and carefully uncorked it, drinking perhaps a touch more sloppily than he would have, were he in better spirits.

“Come home soon,  _amica mea_. I shall never forgive you if you don’t.”

With nothing else to do, he pulled a fresh parchment from his stationary drawer.

 _“My dearest Elara,"_ he began again, not for the first time this evening. The ink flowed smoothly across the page, in stark contrast to the riot that brewed in his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me on tumblr, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul.
> 
> Comments and concrit always appreciated! Thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: For DWC “You can lie to yourself but don’t lie to me.” pairing of your choice.
> 
> Characters: Dorian Pavus, Elara Lavellan
> 
> Rating: General

_9:41 Dragon, Kingswa_

Dorian was waiting for her when she crept back to her quarters, tail between her legs; confused, hurt, and angry, she didn’t notice him until after she dove into the bed and crawled underneath the thick blankets.

“Do, at least, take your boots off before muddying those sheets, _amica,_ or your poor steward will never let you hear the end of it.”

She shuffled under the bedclothes and toed off her boots before kicking them over the sides with a frustrated grunt.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear that. Are you speaking any sort of language known to man?”

She pulled the blanket down just enough to expose her mouth. “Go away, Dorian.”

The mattress shifted under his weight at his approach and he settled comfortably against her mass of pillows. Elara burrowed further under the bedclothes.

“You can’t run from me, you know,” he said softly. A noise suspiciously close to a cork popping punctuated his words, and soon the only sounds were of pouring liquid. “You might as well have some wine and just tell me what’s wrong. Whatever it is, I’m sure half the keep knows by now, anyway.”

He was right, of course. He was always right. Damn him.

Elara shoved herself upright, took one of the offered mugs, and drank the wine in three swallows before gesturing for a refill. She repeated the process under his scrutiny, his raised brow asking questions before he did.

He cut her off at her third glass in as many minutes, taking the cup from her hand and stowing it somewhere off to his side.

“Now that I’ve got you properly hydrated, you’re going to tell me what happened on the ramparts this afternoon.”

“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it. Not now, not ever, forget it.”

He gripped her hand and hauled her back up with a sigh when she crawled back under the blankets. “You can lie to yourself but don’t lie to me, Elara,” he said, his flippant tone doing little to mask his annoyance.  _“_ You’re a miserable liar, anyway _. Kaffas, amica._ I saw you crumple from the rookery, and if I did, so did the rest of this Blighted stronghold of yours.”

She drew her legs to her chest, burying her face between her knees, her hair a shield from his imperious visage. Elara shuddered at the contact of his hand on her back, tentatively stroking as she huddled there.

“I had a… a lapse in judgment,” she said. “Ser Blackwall…”

Elara didn’t realize she had started crying until Dorian’s arms wrapped around her. “Shh, shh, dear one,” he muttered, his chin resting on the crown of her head. “What did the oaf do to offend you so?”

“He told me that whatever we had - what I thought we had - was… a mistake, a misunderstanding.”

Dorian huffed, his arms tensing around her. “What a glorious example of a - do correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the proper word in these parts is _‘jackass.’_   You’re better than that. You deserve better than that disgraceful, hairy lummox.”

She sniffled into his shirt, running the fingers of one hand over the shining buckles of the strange ensemble. “I thought that there was a…” she trailed off with a shake of her head.

“So did I. Maker, Elara, I saw that kiss - thought you two were going to burn the Chantry to the ground before you went off to face Corypheus, and he was far from an unwilling participant in that.”

“Don’t remind me,” she grumbled into his sleeve, a pained sob wracking her shoulders.

His hand stroked over her hair, fingers combing through the errant locks that escaped their tie. “If it makes you feel better,” he murmured thoughtfully, “half this keep would kill to be in my position. The other half would kill Blackwall for you, just to see your glorious smile again. Actually, those two groups might have some overlap.”

She smiled weakly against his shoulder, rubbing her tear-dampened cheek over the complicated fabrics of Dorian’s shirt. “And where would you be in all that mess?”

“Right here, fending them all off, of course. What kind of scandalous, illicit lover of the most sordid rumors do you take me for?” He chuckled, the low noise rumbling in his chest. “Surely my weekly arrival to your tower must have some use - I am in dreadful need of new target dummies, and a swathe of would-be suitors clambering up the stairs sounds like just the perfect thing.”

Elara laughed at the visual, wiping her tears away on the back of her hand. “As long as you don’t melt my staircase, have at it,” she declared with a dramatic wave. “I’m getting too old to be leaping down from story to story.”

“Nonsense, my dear, you hardly look a day over fifty.”

She punched him for that, a loose fist connecting halfheartedly with his bicep. "I’m thirty-five, _masvian.”_

“Whatever that means, I’m sure it only is a compliment, just as I’m sure you didn’t just call me an asshole in that beautiful language of yours.”

Elara laughed at his feigned indignance and curled up against him once more. Dorian passed her the confiscated wine glass and refilled it again.

“And here we are, in our proper routine. All is as it should be.”

She sighed at his declaration but did not object. It was good to have him here, even if she wanted to wallow. It was good to have a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me on tumblr, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul.
> 
> Comments and concrit always appreciated! Thank you for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: how about "dawn cresting over the mountain" for your Lavellan? (hopefully that hasn't been asked already!)
> 
> Characters: Elara Lavellan, Iron Bull  
> Rating: General

There was a break in the weather.

It was so stark - startling against the incessant rain that had beaten upon their tents in the days since they arrived - that the silence woke her.

Elara groaned, blinking away the receding visions of the Fade. She stretched and slid reluctantly from the furs of her bedroll, and bit back a curse when the frigid morning air hit her bare legs.

She stumbled to the tent flaps, fingering the ties apart to escape into the pre-dawn, to find overcast - but dry - skies above.

“It stopped,” she breathed, a small sigh of wearied relief, as she watched the cloud cover drift lazily overhead. Elara shivered as gooseflesh danced over her skin; a cold breeze played with the hem of her tunic, brushing the fabric against her thighs. She made her way just beyond the line of their tents, watching as a patch of sky grew brighter behind its cloudy quilt.

A small cascade of sand and pebbles marked an approach, heavy footfalls in the damp substrate. “Mornin’, boss,” came Bull’s deep voice. “Wasn’t expecting you up for at least another hour or so.”

She pointed to the sky, to the ever-brightening dot just beyond the mountains. “Look.”

Elara and Iron Bull stood in silence as the dawn peeked over the mountain’s edge, piercing through the cloud cover in weak beams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me on tumblr, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul.
> 
> Comments and concrit always appreciated! Thank you for reading!


End file.
